Use of Chinese Visible Human Images to Enhance the Interpretation of CT or MRI Images: Application to Nasopharyngeal Structures Segmentation in the Treatment Planning System

Abstract

Background: With leading morbidity among malignant tumors in otorhinolaryngology, Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is one of the most frequent malignant tumors in China. Objectives: This study aimed to help radiotherapy doctors recognize and segment nasopharyngeal organs at risk of NPC and make a radiotherapy plan. Methods: The authors used B-spline and mutual information to transform, register, and fuse Chinese Visible Human images with the volunteer’s personalized computed tomography (CT) images, and integrated them into the Treatment Planning System (TPS). Consequently, Three-Dimensional Visualization Treatment Planning System (3DV+TPS) was created. To verify it, 3DV+TPS was deployed to identify and segment the nasopharyngeal organs at risk of NPC, and a questionnaire was filled out by radiotherapy doctors. Results: Results showed that 3DV+TPS can finish the registration and fusion of four sets of sectional anatomical images and individual CT images of volunteers in approximately 3 min and 50 sec. Conclusion: The registered and fused images can accurately reflect the position, outline, and adjacent space of the nasopharyngeal structure which is not clear in CT images. Therefore, it is helpful for recognizing and segmenting neural, muscular, and glandular structures. Through automatically registering and fusing color and CT gray images, 3DV+TPS improves the accuracy and efficiency of recognizing nasopharyngeal structures in making radiotherapy plans. It is also useful to improve the teaching quality of tumor radiotherapy for medical students and interns as well.